Errors . . . By Politicians and Hall-of-Famers

HonusWagnerCardMassachusetts Attorney General and unsuccessful U.S. Senate candidate Martha Coakley’s error in labeling Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling a Yankee fan was reminiscent of the late Senator Ted Kennedy’s tenuous command of the world of baseball. Few can forget his famous statement in 1998: “It is a special pleasure for me to introduce our two home run kings for working families in America, Mike McGwire and Sammy Sooser of the White House. Its a pleasure to introduce them.”

It looks like the good Senator is still up to his old tricks. In his posthumously published autobiography, he writes about his grandfather Honey Fitz Fitzgerald, the one-time Boston mayor and congressman and big-time Red Sox fan at the 1903 World Series. On page 78 of “True Compass,” he observes:

“Tessie” may sound a little quaint to today’s ears, but Grandpa’s rendition of it was good enough to cause the great Pittsburgh third baseman Honus Wagner to commit three errors in one inning during a World Series game.

“Third baseman Honus Wagner”? Also, Wagner did not make three errors in one inning during the 1903 World Series. You would think that someone along the line would at least check this stuff.

Actually, there probably is a core of truth to Kennedy’s story. SS Wagner did make two errors in the sixth inning of game 5 of the World Series, which was played in Pittsburgh. A third error was made by Fred Clarke, who played LF. According to Roger Abrams’ wonderful book on the 1903 World Series, a group of 100 Red Sox fans, known as the Royal Rooters, did travel to Pittsburgh from Boston by train for the four World Series games in Pittsburgh. They also made “Tessie” their theme song and sang it repeatedly. A special version, to be sung when Wagner came to the plate, went:

Honus, why do you hit so badly?

Take a back seat and sit down.

Honus, at bat you look so sadly

Hey, why don’t you get out of town.

Then the Rooters would stomp their feet three times in unison shouting “Bang Bang Bang.”

And then one more: “Why don’t you get out of town?”

This could easily be adapted to cover bad plays in the field as well.

Honey Fitz was by all accounts a great fan of the Red Sox and even once tried to buy the team. Abrams doesnt mention him as one of the Royal Rooters, but he probably was.

Whether the singing by Fitzgerald or the Rooters more generally bothered Wagner is an open question, but he did commit a series-high six errors and batted a disappointing .222 with only one extra-base hit. He also struck out to end the series.

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What Should Be Done with Legal Education? (Part IV)

One of the “hot topics” at the 2010 annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) in New Orleans was the topic of “assessment.” The ABA has traditionally approved law schools based on inputs (LSAT/UGPA scores of enrolled students, student-faculty ratio, number of volumes in the library, etc.) rather than on outputs. This in part was a consequence of the already-existing output of the bar exam (though not for Wisconsin). Theoretically, if a school had a poor bar passage rate, it would surely end up going out of business. That hasn’t happened, anywhere. Law schools don’t go out of business; they simply shift to survival mode when necessary. The ABA several years ago added a Standard (these are the criteria used by the ABA in determining whether to approve or re-approve a law school, which permits the graduates of those law schools to take the bar exam in any state) requiring law schools to meet several criteria regarding first-time bar passage rates. However, those criteria were easily avoided. Additionally, the struggle of graduates of historically black law schools with the bar exam made the ABA leery of creating a Standard that might apply in a manner that discriminated in effect even though not in purpose. Now the ABA has a new idea: assessment of outputs other than the bar exam.

Assessment of what law graduates know and what they can do is a good thing. But if history is any judge, it likely will turn out to be bad for both law schools and law graduates. 

Continue ReadingWhat Should Be Done with Legal Education? (Part IV)

Seventh Circuit: Earlier Sentence Served in Juvenile Detention Facility Can Make Defendant a Career Offender

seventh circuitAfter pleading guilty in federal court to various drug-trafficking offenses, Isaiah Gregory received an eye-popping sentence of 327 months in prison — more than 27 years behind bars.  Driving this extraordinary sentence was the district court’s finding that Gregory was a “career offender” under the federal sentencing guidelines.  It was the career offender guideline that raised Gregory’s guidelines range from either 120-135 months (as he calculated it) or 121-151 months (as the government calculated it) to 262-327 months.   Thus, the career-offender finding likely added more than fourteen years to Gregory’s sentence.

Although the term “career offender” may conjure up images of a hardened criminal with a rap sheet down to your knees, the guidelines require only two prior felony convictions of either a crime of violence or a controlled substance offense in order to trigger the career-offender sentence enhancement. 

Even at that, Gregory hardly seems the sort of defendant that the Sentencing Commission must have had in mind when it drafted the career-offender guideline.  In particular, one of his two qualifying convictions was a $30 robbery he committed when he was only fifteen (he is now in his mid-20’s) — a robbery for which he was sent, not to prison, but to a juvenile detention facility.  Although it is not clear that the conviction should have counted under the plain terms of the career-offender guideline, the Seventh Circuit nonetheless affirmed his sentence last week in United States v. Gregory (No. 09-2735). 

Continue ReadingSeventh Circuit: Earlier Sentence Served in Juvenile Detention Facility Can Make Defendant a Career Offender